Contact: Karyn Brown

STARKVILLE, Miss.—An internationally recognized philosopher and author from Ohio speaks Thursday [Oct. 20] at Mississippi State University.

Jenefer Robinson’s university presentation will explore how images might evoke human emotion. Titled “The Missing Person Found: Expressing Emotion in Pictures,” the 4 p.m. event in the Bost Extension Center’s South Hall is free and open to all. Her appearance is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences’ Institute for the Humanities and the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

A faculty member at the University of Cincinnati’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, Robinson teaches and writes on topics in aesthetics and philosophical psychology, especially the theory of emotion.

Her 2005 book “Deeper than Reason” applied recent advances in emotion theory to issues in aesthetics, such as the expression of emotion in the arts, how music arouses emotions and moods, and how the emotional experience of literature and music in particular can be a mode of understanding and appreciation. Published by Oxford University Press, it garnered international acclaim for a new way to examine response to artworks from the perspective of contemporary psychology.

A University of Toronto doctoral graduate, Robinson is former president of the American Society of Aesthetics. For more biographical information, see www.artsci.uc.edu/faculty-staff/listing/by_dept/philosophy.html?eid=robinsjm.

“For more than two decades, Dr. Robinson has broken new ground in an old field of aesthetics and philosophy of art by bringing findings from contemporary cognitive science to bear on classical issues,” said John Bickle, philosophy and religion department head.

A faculty colleague at UC before coming to Starkville, Bickle said Robinson’s research on emotions “has generated genuinely novel discussions about how we experience and understand artistic expression and experience.”

William Anthony Hay, Institute for the Humanities director, said Robinson’s presentation should complement those of recent distinguished lecture series. “The interdisciplinary approach of combining science with aesthetics fits well with presentations on the visual arts that have been highlights of our program,” he explained.

For more on MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences, visit www.cas.msstate.edu; Institute for the Humanities, www.ih.msstate.edu; and philosophy and religion department, www.philosophyandreligion.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.